Having heard a great deal about transportation
improvements in Bogota, Colombia, I was eager to see them with my own
eyes. A business trip to the Colombian oil sector brought me there this
week. Here's what I observed.
Fifteen years ago, I remember it
was semi-suicidal to cross the street as a pedestrian in Bogota. Also, I
don't particularly remember seeing any bicycles there in the 1990s.
Now,
there is an environment which is pedestrian friendlier. There are
decent walk signals, drivers are much more respectful of walkers, and
problem intersections are staffed with actual crossing guard officers
whose only job is to protect pedetrians.
Some streets have been closed off to motorized traffic, and are foot
only. There are ped bridges which span some of the large boulevards
(think freeways), so that people don't get run over and hit trying to
cross. Some of these bridges are gigantic. Imagine a ped bridge over the
Southwest Freeway. The difference from 1997 until today for the
pedestrian is a night/day difference.
A similar story exists for
bicycles. Now, the city is awash in bicycles, seemingly at about the
same participation rate as Seattle. based on my eyeball assessment. Much
is spoken about the Sunday "ciclovias" where they close off key
boulvards to cars and form a ring route for bikes. Also, some has been
written about bicycle paths (European style... seperated from the cars).
What I haven't heard people discuss is the fact that
there
is a tremendous amount of cycling taking place on the old, unchanged
street & road infrastructure, and I didn't observe anything in the
way of Texas-style car/bike conflict ("get out of my way you
a****le!"), and I was looking for it. The bicyclist behaviors are good;
overall, helmet use is in the 30% range (higher for middle class riders,
lower for working class). There is decent fraction of users who use
bike lights at night, much more so than here in the Houston area.
{a
roadway similar to Allen Parkway. Note wide walking paths on both
sides. Bi-directional bike lane seen on the left. Passenger train
running down the middle. Note dramatic pedestrian suspension bridge in
the background}
In other words, there has been a strong and
successful intervention concerning operator behaviors, for both
motorized and non-motorized users, quite apart from the building of new
infrastructure. The culture has changed, it has done a 180 degree turn.
This is the point I made to
Chelsea Young,
the new H-GAC bike/ped coordinator, just prior to my Bogota trip. I
expressed the opinion that the H-GAC bike/ped subcommittee spends too
much time thinking about ways to get more funding to "build stuff"
(When? 2040? I'll be 79 years old. With what money? All levels of
government are broke), and not enough time trying to change behaviors to
make life easier and safer for bicyclists and pedestrians today with
the infrastructure we have.
My sentiments are shared by John Forester, PE himself, the father of modern traffic cycling principles. Bogota proves that point. You can significantly move forward with the infrastructure you've got.
The
TransMillenio true bus rapid transit (BRT) is a great success in
Bogota. I say "true" because it has dedicated lanes taken away from cars
(gasp) and sheltered platforms where customers pre-pay before boarding
and the platform is level with the floor. METRO's HOV buses fails on
both these points. The vehicles are the same config as the artiqs METRO
used to run, but a different brand. When you see the bus after bus after
bus coming down the guideway all day long, and every bus is full, and
you see the scope of the TransMillenio coverage on the map, you can see
what a hugely important asset this is to Bogota. If you took away the
Trans with the shake of an evil magic wand, the city's economy would
crumble. It would be like shutting down New York's subway or London's
Tube. Taking away some car lanes and given them over to the BRT has
resulted in a huge net increase in the number of people you can move
across the metro area.
But car drivers do pay a price. There is
no congestion tax, but you can only bring your car into the central city
on certain days, based on your license plate number. If you look
around, you see 2-3 people in each car at rush hour. People cooperate to
get each other home; what a concept. There would be no way to have
mostly single-occupant vehicles in Bogota. Again, the system would come
to a halt.
Remember, Bogota is 7 million people with a density
of 11,000 per square mile. Houston is 2 million at 3,450 per square
mile. Bogotanos had no choice. They had make the choices they made more
than 15 years ago in order to have a working city now. But let's also
keep in mind, the per capita GDP in Colombia is $6,685, in the USA it's
$48,147. Colombia is one-seventh as wealthy as the USA, per person. If
they could make these changes, why can't we?
The upside is that
with all of this walk- and bike-friendliness now Bogota is becoming a
new trendy tourist location and bringing even more economic development
to the city.
Tourists
enjoying the Usaquen district of Bogota on foot. I enjoyed a delicious
"parillada mixta" (mixed grill) and a Club Colombia extra-dry pilsner at
a posh restaurant in Usaquen on 2 March 2012. Photo by Google+ User
Loon Lio. Posted to the public Internet.
More photos here.
